If you had the great fortune to grow up in Michigan, it is not unusual to take Mackinac Island for granted. For many families, the Island simply exists, “up north” as Michiganders are wont to say, (even if they are actually traveling east, west, or heck – south.) Even if your family didn’t frequently visit Mackinac, its existence doesn’t feel like anything out of the ordinary.

One truth I have learned through traveling is that a tourist’s impressions of a place are largely colored by the tourist, himself or herself. The same exact city through two different pairs of eyes can look unbelievably dissimilar.

For my husband and me, Italy’s Amalfi Coast is our special place. We honeymooned there. And we have returned every other year since that honeymoon to recapture some of that early-days romance, some of that excitement of our younger selves, and to bask in the golden rays of the sun-soaked Coast.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting Greenfield Village in Dearborn, then you have experienced an authentic Cotswold Cottage, moved painstakingly, stone by numbered stone from a village in England over to the United States. From the very first time I had a school field trip to Greenfield, the cottage was one of my favorite buildings on the site. It had seemed so different from the other houses in the village, more storybook than reality, more a Goldilocks dream than actual real estate.

I didn’t know very much about Cornwall before we visited – only what I had seen represented on TV and the very loose history of Cornish miners in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (mostly about pasties, if I’m being honest). I’d read something about cream teas and heard of The Pirates of Penzance, but other than that, just vague holiday notions of a seaside region of Britain.

What comes to mind when hearing or reading the words “afternoon tea?” Is it crisp, white tablecloths and delicate, bone china dishes, scones and jams and pinkies sticking out just so? Is it something more casual, perhaps? Just cups of hot brew with a little cream, shared at a table to help keep your eyes open mid-day? Or maybe it’s fancier still, with tiny triangles of cucumber sandwiches and Coronation Chicken, trifles of Battenberg cakes and macaroons all set upon three tiers of perfectly assembled wonder.